Friday afternoon, a long week behind me I pack up at Forte HQ and consider swinging barside to see who might be around and about for a general unwinding and clinking of a glass or two.

Then I think about the weekend ahead and decide no, domestics normally reserved for Saturday must be addressed tonight, for we have dear friends’ wedding celebrations tomorrow and there simply won’t be time.

I scoot home looking forward to the gentle addressing of said domestics, carried out to the accompaniment of radio plays and music. There isn’t too much to be done; laundry and ironing – the latter a pleasure because it offers slow thinking time whilst folding order into our lives. Knowing that BB will, in the ungodly hour he has to wake for his role as teacher to small boys, slide a perfectly pressed shirt over his arms, makes me happy (I am normally still slumbering deeply when this happens.) There is a great deal to be said for the sensuous joy of slipping into well-ironed sheets. These simple, basic tasks are a small price to pay for the luxury they afford and after a long week of frantic twelve-hour days, feel therapeutic.

BB returns home later and we complete the evening chatting over a glass or two of wine, relaxing in our orderly home, gazing over the garden he has somehow, over the preceding weekends, recrafted from mud-bath into tiny Eden.

A sleepy Saturday awakening, breakfast, more pottering and then preparation for the champion wedding celebration taking place in a lovely location by the canal in Hackney. We are not sure who will be there and although an after-party is planned we anticipate being home by six. We have, however, underestimated the joy in this celebration, the compelling mix of guests; familiar faces, new and interesting acquaintances. Of course, we find ourselves at the after-party, arriving home after midnight chatting happily about the sweet and uncomplicated celebration for two lovely uncomplicated people, who have found in each other rare love and companionship.

It is midday when I wake on Sunday. BB has been up for a couple of hours and together we make breakfast, speculating on how to spend the day. We decide nothing and as the weather is bright, I settle in the sun-rich garden with a magazine, while he retires to the sofa to curate his vast collection of photographs.

The garden: a whole new world of beauty captured within a pocket handkerchief slice of East London. When we arrived at this rented house it was a shambles; a coat of paint and a damn good clean sorted out the interior but the exterior needed serious attention. The work that BB has put into it is now coming to fruition; he dug deep, removing what remained of old grass and tenacious weeds that choked the few square meters of mud that the estate agent called garden. He leveled the surface, created borders and beds, replanted shrubs into spots that would be better for their health and introduced new ones bought from Columbia Road market.

He pruned the fig-tree, mended the shambolic greenhouse that marks the end of our territory, hung lanterns and wrought-iron framed mirrors in strategic and clever places. The laying of emerald green turf heralded the finishing touch to our tiny Eden.

Deck chair facing the sun, in reckless defiance of all advice given to 54-year-old women, I lifted my face to the rays, stretched my arms and legs and absorbed the unique heat created by that ball of fire in the sky. Penetrating my skin, delving into the very marrow of my bones I felt the sun literally warming of the cockles of my heart.

Eyes closed, light dappled against my eyelids I focused on sounds filtering through the air; the happy, noisy lunch taking place two or three doors down, a Bangladeshi family enjoying each others company, scents of their fragrant food arriving intermittently on the breeze. I listened to an East End Mum talking her small child through the flowers in their garden, the excited young voice calling out colours and shapes of the petals and leaves being uncovered and discovered.

This is it, I thought. This is the essence of lives lived in one of the most deprived yet burgeoning parts of London; this is what takes place from day to day in households across the nation, away from politics, set apart from the human fury that is delivered minute-by-minute by the myriad media and news channels that fight for our attention through our phones, our computers, our radios and televisions.

In generating human intolerance and dissatisfaction, what our so-called leaders fail to understand is that this simple way of being is the life-blood of the nation they seek to manipulate and rule. Here on this Sunday afternoon in our tiny Eden, I listened to the uncelebrated every day of everyday people who just want to get along, to live cheek-by-jowl in uncomplicated harmony, just as this weekend has given to us.

I hope and wish for many, more.

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About fortewinks

A secretary at 19 and self employed at 26, Giovanna has become a British healthcare entrepreneur. She is also a bon vivant and mother of two clever and accomplished daughters. Youngest-of-All is a talented Patisserie Chef living and working in Melbourne Australia (if you are there, visit All Are Welcome in Northcote). FirstBorn is a, adventuresse, published author and documentary journalist, living wherever her mood or investigations require, just rarely in the UK.